Day 17

The original plan for today was to visit the famous snorkelling beach of Hanauma Bay but Sod’s Law kicks in, it’s now closed on Tuesdays. Instead we opt for a drive up to the north coast of Oahu.

Much of the journey is on a busy freeway, as wide and full as any we have seen in any American city. Honolulu doesn’t have a mass transit system or any public transport beyond a few buses and the result is very busy roads. They are currently building an overhead rail system around the airport and Pearl Harbor and it will be interesting to see if that alleviates the problems.

Once off the freeway onto the smaller roads of the North the first recommended stop is the Dole Pineapple Plantation. This doesn’t sound very exciting, but the car park is absolutely packed. After a short debate we decide just to visit the shop and get a coffee.

Entry into the shop is an experience – it’s enormous, buzzing, and filled in every direction with a sea of bright yellow merchandise. Pineapple clothing, pineapple soft toys, pineapple art, pineapple jewellery. I suspect if you fell asleep (which would be a challenge) they would just paint a pineapple on you and add a price tag.

We forgo the $1200 pineapple brooch with real diamonds, but Frances finds some excellent costume jewellery, including, naturally, a small pineapple pendant. Coffee is served with a pineapple Danish pastry. When in Rome…

Lunch is a nice Fajita at a small "historic" shopping centre on the coast, entertainment provided by yet more feral chickens. After that we have a short walk on a pretty beach, but as usual there’s no provision for casual visitors to spend time there, and anyway it’s too rough to swim. We end up at the Waimea State Park, a small botanical garden developed in a fertile canyon ending in a waterfall. Sadly it’s not the season for many of the flowers, but the park is full of colourful birds.

Almost without discussion we both decide we want to go back to the "Bakery" at Macy’s. Service and food are again excellent, it’s a good way to finish our last full day in Hawaii.

Day 18

Sadly we say goodbye to Hawaii. (Confusingly that’s "Aloha" again.) Our drive to the airport, car hire return, check in and security take a total of less than an hour, which must be some sort of record. The flight is smooth and unremarkable, although Hawaiian Airlines really don’t have the trick of onboard customer service.

There’s a bit of a trek at the other end to the San Francisco car hire centre, but yet again the Avis Preferred system works beautifully and we get shown straight to our car with one signature on pre-prepared paperwork. However, having booked a Ford Edge, a tiny SUV at the bottom of the range, I’m a bit surprised to be presented with a VW Atlas, which appears to be their response to the Lincoln Navigator. For British readers, that’s about the same size as the Queen Mary. However the controls are all identical to Frances’ VW Polo.

We manage to get the Ark Royal out of harbour and onto the road, and find our way to Pacifica, on the coast just south of San Francisco. I dock the Starship Enterprise, we’re checked in by a charming young lady who has no problem providing service at 11pm, and we gratefully tumble into bed just after midnight.

Day 19

Even though we’re only a few yards from Highway 1, we get a decent night’s sleep and awake to a sunny Pacifica. The primary purpose of today is taking things gently, breaking the travel and helping to unwind the jet lag, but we also do a bit of "practical" shopping, for things like jeans and shirts where we prefer American products (and manage to get several sale bargains).

Lunch is accompanied by further hilarity courtesy of TV adverts. The advert in question appears to be completely straight, but features "The Midden Family". I know for a fact that "midden" has the same meaning to American historians as English ones, and a British advert really wouldn’t feature a family by name if that name happened to be "Rubbish-Heap" 🙂

We get a very pleasant couple of hours in the sun in the afternoon – at last, a hotel with some provision for this activity! Then it’s off to San Francisco for the wonderful Beach Blanket Babylon revue.

As always, this provides equal opportunity offense, thoroughly sending up a range of politicians, celebrities, ethnic and national stereotypes with a stream of hilarious songs and outrageous costumes (with some very, very big hats). The audience covers a range of ages, genders and colours, but you suspect that we all have a similar political standpoint, and the Trump character is treated as a pantomime villain. The "Von Trump" family singing a version of "Doe, a Deer" which ends "That will make us lots of dough, dough, dough, dough" sticks in my head, but that’s just one moment from almost two hours of laughter.

Sadly this will be the last time we see the show, at least in San Francisco, as after 45 years it’s coming to an end, but it’s a great way to end our holiday.

Day 14

Waimea is an odd place. After a lazy morning we go out in search of a coffee. The tiny cinema opposite has updated its programme. Apparently this week it’s "Angry Bird 2", showing on 5 days, "Sat cloed". There are two obvious inferences: they’ve run out of Ss, and they are closed on Saturday. However neither is supported by the evidence – last week the film was "Hobbs and Shaw", and later on (on Saturday evening) there is plenty of evidence of punters arriving…

We walk the length of Main Street looking for a coffee shop in increasing desperation. We’re just about to give up, when we realise the very last building has about 10 signs saying "coffee" or "expresso". It’s only missing a Terry Gilliam hand in the sky pointing down.

The lady who runs the coffee shop cheerfully announces to us that she’s an old hippy but we could probably have guessed… However she then goes on to explain that before she dropped out she was a professor.

I am about to say "What were you a professor of?" but some sixth sense kicks in, and it comes out "Of what were you a professor?"

"Comparative linguistics."

"I’m glad I just got the grammar right then."

"Don’t worry. I used to correct my husband’s love letters to me."

The conversations we have on holiday.

Day 15

We have a very quick and efficient transfer to Oahu. After the other islands Honolulu is a bit of a shock, but the busy freeway takes us to within a few hundred yards of our hotel. This turns out to be a rather twee historic guest house up on the hill well above the bustle of the city.

The check in process is slightly fraught as the hotel seems to be staffed entirely by an oriental family each of which commands a different subset of the English language, and Frances is also somewhat concerned about the reports of multiple dogs and cats. However in practice the only real problem is a very low door into the bathroom which leads to a few "ow, bugger" moments.

The hotel is near the University and we get lunch at a nice student café, followed by a second course at McDonald’s when Frances gets a sudden craving for an apple pie.

After settling into our room we go down to the Ala Moana Beach Park, to see what’s going on and to case the joint for catching our tour in the morning. The recce proves to be worthwhile as the Ala Moana Centre covers multiple blocks and houses a mall of over 300 shops.

The beach front is a hive of activity. We see fishing, surfing, jogging, family parties and multiple weddings or photo shoots taking advantage of the late afternoon light. We get a great sunset and in particular dramatic golden light on the big buildings behind Waikiki Beach.

Back in the shopping centre we go into Macy’s and look for their food court. There’s something called "The Bakery", which suggests a couple of old ladies with a stack of sandwiches and a coffee machine, which would do fine. However this turns out to be a lively full service restaurant which does a great prime rib for very little money. Result.

Day 13

We have booked a guided tour of the Allerton Gardens. We are both expecting a short walk through a botanical garden with someone spouting a lot of Latin names, but it turns out to be nothing like that. Robert Allerton was a contemporary of Hearst and created what can best be described as an "outdoor Hearst Castle", a series of wonderful "outdoor rooms" spread over a large bay previously owned by Hawaiian Royalty. Robert’s companion John was a talented architect, and the gardens are full of clever water features, all still working well as they approach their centenary.

Our guide Dave is very entertaining. A successful farmer and botanist in his own right he is knowledgeable about both the history and the biology of the gardens. In addition he tells us about the extensive use of the gardens as film locations, including for the famous "fruit kebab" chase in the second Pirates of the Caribbean. However the highlight are the enormous ficus trees which provided not one but three separate iconic scenes in Jurassic Park.

In the evening we celebrate Frances’ birthday at a Luau, a classic Hawaiian dinner and entertainment. We have chosen well, the floor show is up to West End standards with great costumes, dancing and a thrilling fire eater/dancer. We also get on very well with the others at our table, yet again (as in the helicopter) comprising not one but two honeymooning couples.

Tomorrow is Frances’ birthday – we’ve celebrated very well.

Day 12

The morning is centred on an activity I have been looking forward to all summer, my helicopter flight. After a short drive I arrive on time, check in, pay, and watch the safety briefing, which seems to be significantly more involved than that for flying over Namibia with the doors off, or over Barbados in a motorbike with wings.

Then about two minutes before take off I discover that they’ve actually managed to miss me off the passenger manifest, so we have a short panic while that is resolved. However I end up with the prime seat in the front of the chopper, next to a very small lady to balance the load!

The flight itself is wonderful. Shay, our pilot is very entertaining, the scenery is magnificent and we fly really closely to the Jurassic Park waterfall, the Na Pali Coast and the big mountains in the middle of the island. The doors make photography a bit more challenging and I’m continually adjusting the polarising filter to try and handle internal reflections, but the results look promising.

In the afternoon we explore the tourist centre of the south of Kauai, and end up having dinner at a hotel restaurant watching a classic Hawaiian sunset. Perfect.

Day 11

Sleep is again interrupted by bedding problems and over-keen roosters.

Chickens are in fact a major factor on Kauai. Almost everywhere you look you can see one or two padding around, and it’s rare that you can’t hear a cockerel. We learn later that although most are feral, they are quite welcome as they feed on insects which would otherwise be a problem, and are effectively protected (in contrast to feral pigs, for which the Parks Service will happily give you a permit and probably a gun.)

Wherever I travel there are usually species which has adapted to living off the scraps of human activity: pigeons, the little brown birds on Barbados, the feral dogs of Bhutan. Here it’s chickens, and they’ve even got bloody good at crossing roads!

We opt for a light breakfast and then head up into Waimea Canyon. This is just as dramatic as billed – deep and full of interesting forms, but a combination of rock with contrasting greenery and dramatic waterfalls, unlike its cousin in Arizona.

The views are also enlivened by quickly changing weather. At one point we are looking down onto the inaccessible Na Pali coast, the view is clear, then completely disappears in low cloud and then clears again, in less than 5 minutes. We eat our sandwich lunch sheltering in the car from a sharp shower, and read that the mountains in the west of Kauai are arguably the wettest place on earth.

After exploring the canyon we have a relaxed afternoon shopping in a local historic town. However it proves surprisingly hard to purchase a cup of coffee after 4 pm. Kauai shop working hours are so short they make a joke of it themselves, but it does seem oddly un-American.

We have a good dinner, and then an early night, with a rather more restful nights sleep.

Day 8 – Haleakala

For a mountain lodge the night is surprisingly noisy: large vehicles on the road, guests moving cars around all night, and a rooster who gets confused and starts crowing at 1 am. In addition we have a somewhat binary provision on bedding – a quilt which is far too hot, but it’s too cold for nothing.

We make an early start. An excellent breakfast makes up for some of the privations, and then we head up the mountain. In contrast to the Road to Hana the road up Haleakala is consistently two cars wide and beautifully surfaced and cambered. It would be a joy to charge in a sports car, but on a normal day it’s also very pleasant to motor up gently observing the speed limit and the great views.

At the top there are three viewpoints providing different perspectives on the volcano’s crater. This isn’t a true caldera – the main vulcanism stopped a long time ago and what’s now visible is the result of erosion by wind and rain, with a few volcanic vents breaking the surface. However the range of colours and shapes make for some great photos, with Mauna Kea (on the Big Island) visible in the background, showing what Haleakala looked like in its prime.

On the way back down I’m getting a bit mesmerised by the constant turns and the warm afternoon, and we stop just outside the park at an excellent coffee shop. We get there just a few minutes before they close. At 2pm!

Back at the hotel mid afternoon we have a pleasant few hours in the sun, although we have to sit at a picnic table (no loungers) and I become slightly annoyed at the bureaucracy one shop assistant attempts to impose on my buying a second beer…

Dinner is again very pleasant, we dismantle the quilt to just use the cover, and the rooster keeps quiet until after 4 am. Much better.

Day 9

We bid farewell to the mountain and spend the morning exploring the west coast, location of the main tourist beaches and hotels. It’s OK, but not visually exciting and the retail opportunities are very poor after Paia and Makawao.

On the way back into Kahului Frances finds a fabric shop. After about an hour we leave with several lengths, including both a fish pattern and Angry Birds for future shirts for me.

We have a quiet afternoon by the pool and an early dinner – tomorrow we move on to Kauai.

Day 10

The flight to Kauai is full but short and uneventful. It flies very low and we get great views of the intervening smaller islands. As the plane is a Boeing 717 I reckon that "completes the set" and means that over the years we have flown all major models of the company’s jets.

There’s a slightly annoying bus ride to the Lihue airport car rental lot, but once there I literally just show my ID and get handed the keys to a shiny new Mustang. Whether this is astounding efficiency or the general Hawaiian avoidance of work is hard to assess.

The road to Waimea is heavily reminiscent of the main road through northern Barbados, but with occasional glimpses of much higher scenery in the island’s centre. When we reach the hotel it turns out to be more of a motel – perfectly well equipped but again nowhere to sit in the sun, and very limited on-site service. The most confusing instruction is an 11am check-out time, before the office opens in the morning!

Back on “The Road to Hana”, but now “from”. The northern stretch is well-surfaced but we’re soon back to regular single-lane bridges. Our early start means we are well advanced on the way back before we meet consistent traffic, but you can imagine that later in the day in peak season it could get a bit frustrating.

This is the wet side of the island and there are some great waterfalls along the way. However some of the expected landmarks seem to be either absent or hidden, and others are a bit underwhelming, although the wet weather doesn’t help.

The honourable exception, and definitely our favourite attraction, is the Garden of Eden, a charming arboretum laid out just above the road, reaching about a mile up the slopes with views of a couple of dramatic waterfalls and also right down to the sea. We get a latte at the coffee stand (at last!) and have an entertaining chat with the operator who admits that at age 20 she effectively “ran away to sea”. This appears to be a common pattern among the non-Polynesian Mauians.

We finally get back to Paia in the early afternoon, and head up the mountain. First stop is Makawao, a small town with a twee “western style” shopping street housing a range of galleries and boutiques. Frances and I are both attracted to one gallery where the artist puts her designs on a variety of media including T Shirts. Apparently Mick Fleetwood is a regular customer, but we establish that he is a rather different shape to yours truly, and sadly I come away empty handed, but Frances buys two.

The road continues rising, and eventually we reach the Kula Lodge. Dinner is Prime Rib while looking down on a very dramatic sunset over West Maui.

Day 4 – Retail Therapy

We’re awake early, and spend an hour catching up with political developments in the UK. Then at 7am we discover behind a nondescript door next to the “boutique doss house” a wonderful coffee shop which does the best breakfast of the trip so far.

Fed and watered we explore Paia. There are some good “retail therapy opportunities” (much needed after the previous night), but we have to forgo those which don’t open until 11, or only when there’s a Q in the month… Nevertheless I get a couple of great T shirts in a shop part-owned by Alice Cooper (Alice in Hulaland). Frances finds some pineapple fabric to replace the net curtains which she washed when slightly the worse for wear after a glass of wine at the end of a long day, removing the pattern!

Frances also takes a fancy to a rather nice blouse embellished with one-off appliqué. We start to move away when we realise it’s $300, but the sales lady seals its fate when she points out that the workshop has added pockets. “I don’t do pockets,” Frances announces, “in fact I usually remove them if a garment has them.” Of which more later…

After that we bite the bullet and drive back towards Kahului, the island capital, and find a more suitable hotel. Lunch is delayed slightly while we pay a visit to the Hawaiian version of Primark: Frances has yet again come on a hot holiday without any summer dresses! For the princely sum of £30 we get not one, but three. Sorted.

The new hotel is in a less charming location, but everything works, the staff are friendly, the room is a good size, and we get a quiet afternoon by the pool and a decent night’s sleep. Tick.

Day 5 – The Road to Hana

Maui is dominated by two main features. In the middle of the main part of the island is Haleakala, a 10,000 ft volcano. Around the edge is “The Road to Hana”, named for the small town at the opposite end to Kahalui. Read the tourist guidance and you would think this is a slightly scaled down version of Bolivia’s “Road of Death”. Fortunately that’s bollocks.

It is a small road which gets a lot of tourist traffic, especially along the North shore of the island. A lot of people try and drive the road to Hana and back in one day, and that can be a bit fraught. The southern section is shown on maps as unsurfaced and is described with dire warnings. However we’ve been told that a counter-clockwise circumnavigation is not only possible but desirable as there’s a lot less traffic, so that’s what we decide on.

The Western section is a good road up over the edge of Haleakala. We stop at a charming new church, a garden dedicated to Sun Yat Sen and all the Chinese who helped develop Hawaii, and a great little coffee shop attached to a winery. We decide against the wine tasting, just in case the southern section is really as bad as described.

It isn’t. Most of the road has a very good tarmacked surface with appropriate barriers where required. One stretch is down to the standard of the roads in Surrey, with multiple patch repairs but still surfaced. A few short stretches don’t have any asphalt, but they are well graded. This is the dry part of the island and has almost a moorland feel, but it’s a moorland which borders a dramatic Pacific coast, and for a while we can clearly see the top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island, peeking out from a cloud just like Bali Hai. Our own island is the same, with our views up Haleakala truncated by low cloud a couple of thousand feet up the slopes.

As the road rounds into the Eastern section things change a bit, with the road hugging the base of dramatic cliffs. Some parts are narrow and we have to pay attention to passing places. Things are somewhat fraught for a few miles north of the park and waterfalls at O’heo Gulch, but only because the more substantial traffic has to carefully juggle through narrow stretches including a number of one lane bridges.

After a while the road widens again and we come into Hana itself. We find that in contrast to Paia we have lucked out with a great apartment with a stunning sea view. Excellent.

We finally managed to make our trip to Hawaii, which was cancelled at the last minute in 2016. Here’s how we got on…

Day 1

We have a faultless flight by Virgin to San Francisco. Despite dire prognostications we leave and arrive on time, and speed quickly through US Immigration. I decide we should try the BART which gets us fairly quickly half way (after being shown how to work the ticket machines), but we then sit forever at a station awaiting clearance through a section undergoing engineering work (this is a Sunday afternoon). We transfer to a taxi and complete our ride to Union Square that way. Our hotel Handlery’s is still as it always was. However there’s just a suspicion that this trip may have some aspects which take a few goes to get right.

Day 2 – San Francisco

Thanks to copious jet lag we’re awake in the middle of the night, but then manage to get back to sleep through to nearly 7, amazing.

American TV is weird, and some of the adverts are unintentionally hilarious from a British viewpoint. We love the drug adverts, with their long lists of potential side-effects, just like the "Caine Madness" in Evolution. There’s a new nadir today which has us both in stitches: a treatment for irritable bowel syndrome, but the compound has apparently "… been linked with PBL, a brain disease leading to paralysis and death". I’ll take my chances with IBS, thanks.

We find an early breakfast, then do some shopping around Union Square based purely on who’s open (Forever 21!!). By the time we’ve shopped and had coffee the queue for the cable car is around the block. We decide to walk across the city and try and get the cable car back, which turns out to be both good exercise and a great way to observe the changes to San Francisco since we were last there. The tourist spots are definitely busier, and some areas look a bit dingy and in need of a bit of TLC, but otherwise the changes aren’t too dramatic. We visit Lombard Street, "the crookedest street in the world" and Fisherman’s Wharf, then manage to get the cable car back for an hour by the pool and an early night.

Day 3 – The "Boutique Doss House"

Back to San Francisco Airport, and we get our flight to Maui. It all goes like clockwork, the plane arrives 1/2 hour early, and we’re punished by an equivalent delay before the luggage even starts to come through. Fortunately the car hire process is very quick and we reach our initial destination, Paia, in time for a late lunch.

Paia is clearly where artists, surfers and hippies who don’t quite fit in elsewhere end up. The shops are charming, but some of the practical arrangements less so. Our "boutique hotel" turns out to be poky, noisy and with zero customer service. The woman who gives us our keys literally runs before we can ask any questions, there’s a long list of dos and don’ts on the bed, and I realise it’s the only hotel of the whole trip which has taken full payment in advance (probably due to a history of people cancelling when they see "the accommodations"). The toilet is not so much as "en suite" as "dans chambre", next to the head of the bed separated by a thin curtain. I suppose "boutique doss house" doesn’t work as well…

We have an interesting hour watching wind and kite surfers at the local beach, then an early dinner.

Our much-needed beauty sleep is interrupted by pillow problems, what appears to be a loud lecture in Dutch at about 1 am, and a literal cat fight at about 4…